August 25, 2023
The SEC All-Stars: Executive Pay Nuggets at the Executive Compensation Conference
While I am disclosing all of my deepest secrets today, I will note that the title of the panel that I write about in this blog involves one of my favorite foods – nuggets! Because I was so obsessed with Chicken McNuggets when McDonald’s first introduced them in the early 1980s, my brothers and friends nicknamed me “McDave.” Believe it or not, some still call me that to this day!
At the upcoming “20th Annual Executive Compensation Conference” on Friday, September 22, I am joining yet another line-up of SEC All-Stars to provide you with the most important executive compensation nuggets for the upcoming proxy season and beyond. Joining me for this panel will be Mark Borges, Brian Breheny, Meredith Cross and Ron Mueller, each of whom need no introduction to this community!
We will tackle a wide range of topics over the course of an hour, including pay versus performance, equity grant considerations, CD&A disclosures, the latest on perquisites and executive compensation shareholder proposals. I will be tackling the last topic, where we have observed some interesting trends during the 2023 proxy season.
As Meredith noted in The Advisors Blog on CompensationStandards.com (citing this Gibson Dunn memo), executive compensation shareholder proposals increased 108% from 2022. The increase was mostly related to numerous proposals focused on executive severance agreements, which were already a trending proposal topic in 2022. I will address the outcomes observed with these proposals, and I will also touch on proposals which requested that companies include, or report on the possibility of including, social or environmental performance measures in compensation programs.
After a week of persistent nagging by McDave, are you ready to sign up for the September Conferences? This SEC All-Stars panel, along with the rest of the panels at the “Proxy Disclosure & 20th Annual Executive Compensation Conferences,” will provide you with all of the guidance that you need to successfully navigate the proxy season, so I encourage you to register today. And do not forget to register for our “2023 Practical ESG Conference” – which takes place on Tuesday, September 19th and can be bundled with the “Proxy Disclosure & 20th Annual Executive Compensation Conferences.”
– McDave Lynn